Here are some particularly exciting facts about the CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs – some known and some lesser known! If you know of any more interesting tidbits, please do share them below in the comments.
Interesting known and lesser known facts about Steve Jobs
1. Steve Jobs is a college dropout with having attended just one semester at Reed College in Oregon in 1972.
2. At its very beginning, Apple consisted of only two employees: Steve Jobs and his fellow college dropout friend Steve Wozniak.
3. Born to an unmarried graduate student Joanne Carole Schieble and a Syrian father Abdul Fattah Jandali, Steven Paul Jobs was later adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs, a middle-class American couple.
4. In 1974, Steve Jobs was deeply affected by Indian spiritualism and existentialism which finally brought him to India. He wanted to visit the Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram. However, upon arrival he learnt that Neem Karoli Baba had died.
5. According to a regulatory filing, Steve Jobs took home a salary of $1 in 2010.
6. In 1985, Jobs was ousted from the company he founded by John Sculley after a disagreement on how to run the company. Incidentally, Jobs had brought Sculley from Pepsi.
7. Out from Apple, Jobs, then 30, started NeXT Computer Inc. The company developed a computer rival to Mac and PCs powered by Intel chips and Microsoft’s Windows software. Though the NeXT computer won admiration for its technology prowess, the NeXT’s machines kept losing money in product sales. And Steve was forced to abandon NeXT’s hardware operations in 1993.
8. In a remarkable feat of negotiating legerdemain, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs got much needed cash and — in return for non-voting shares — and an assurance that Microsoft would support Office for the Mac for five years. This unexpected revelation prompted gasps of disbelief and loud boos from the audience of thousands of Mac users and software developers at Boston MacWorld 1997. Jobs attempted to soothe the audience, saying: We have to let go of a few notions here. We have to let go of the idea that for Apple to win, Microsoft needs to lose.
9. Steve Jobs chose the name Apple for his company because he admired the Beatles’ Apple Records. This later led to a legal battle between Apple Corp, owned by Beatles band members Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono. However the dispute was settled later in February 2007.
10. Steve Jobs is a Buddhist and a firm vegetarian.
11. Jobs has also never named a successor. However he did point out two potential leaders in COO Timothy Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer, Apple.
12. Steve Jobs is also the only corporate honcho to have read about his own death when the financial news wire Bloomberg published an article stating Steve Jobs having died due to pancreatic cancer.
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